Ask Us Anything: US H1B VISA Fee in the Tech Industry + Should I Get a Mentor?

0:00I'm Adam Schwab. I'm Adir Shifflin. And this is The Contrarians with Adam and Adir.

0:10And we are back. Episode 139, Ask Us Anything. We've got the chief question asker in live and in person. Mike, over to you. Okay. Our first question this week comes in on LinkedIn and it is from Shay. What do you think will be the impact of the new US H1B visa fee on the tech industry? Specifically, how can Australia, Israel, India, and other countries leverage this great opportunity? So as you probably know, the H-1B, so the Trump administration have completely changed what effectively is a, but we call it a skilled worker visa, is the H-1B, and really used a lot by tech firms. It used to be a lottery system where you'd enter this lottery and, I don't know, a couple of percent of people would get one, like effectively a green card.

0:57and now it's transferred to you. You pay$100 ,000 US, you can pretty much get one. So, Adi, what do you think about this new system? Well, I think, you know, aren't they still trying to figure it out and make it up as they go along? Because when they announced it, nobody expected it. It came out of nowhere. Then they made a comment that said, what was the price? 100K USD, right? So, like, it started off as 100K USD a year and then there was, panic. And everyone was like, if you've got one of these H1Bs and you're anywhere in the world, get on a plane back to the US in the next like 24 hours. It was madness, madness, craziness was going on.

1:35And then someone came out and said, oh, actually, it's not going to be every year. It's just going to be a one-off. Look, I don't even know if it's been finalized what it is. And the thing is as follows. So Trump has this idea, which is American jobs for Americans, let's call it. And that's a good theory, but unfortunately, there are not always Americans to do American jobs. And one of those examples is probably it's most pronounced in the tech sector, where there's a lot of specialized skills or just an overwhelming demand for labor that is in a global marketplace for a global scarcity. And so I can't imagine that any tech company would say, oh, there's enough talent in the US for us to employ.

2:20Let's go and do it the harder way and start using these visas to bring people in from overseas. Like it's a headache to bring people in from overseas. It's a long lead time to get an employee. And so like on the flip side, yeah, people might say, I want to move to the US, I'll go and get this H-1B. But generally speaking, these visas are linked to companies. And if you want to move to another company, like it's not the simplest process. Yeah, the other company has to sponsor you essentially. That's right. They have to take over the sponsorship. And so I think this is quite dumb. Not that I was being asked for my opinion on it, but I think it's quite dumb because you're making something difficult that was already difficult and probably wasn't people's preference.

3:04There's arguments both ways. And I've got a little bit of sympathy for this. There's a lot of Trump's polls I think are ridiculous. I think this one, there's pros and cons. I don't think it's clear cut. Just a quick bit of facts for you before we go on. Well, that's going to ruin this podcast if you revert to facts. It's pretty relevant here. Here's the top 10. Actually, let me ask you, who do you think the top 10 users of H1Bs are? Can you name anything? Oh, big tech. I don't know. Like Microsoft, Amazon, et cetera. So Microsoft is number five. Google. Amazon's number one. Google's number eight.

3:39Oh, that's interesting. Apple's number four. There's a few interesting ones here. This is where I think Trump's sort of viewpoint comes on. Number two is Cognizant Tech Solutions, I think could be Indian-owned. I could be wrong. Number three is Ernst & Young. Number four is Tata, obviously the big massive Indian conglomerate. Well, they're basically just bringing Indians in presumably, right, into the US. And number nine is Infosys. So three are the big ones aren't just big tech, it's big India. It's big Indian sort of – not call centers, big India tech, called body shops. Which was, so it was Tata Infosys and what was the other one you said?

4:13Congressman Tata Infosys and everything else is US-based, EY. No, because there was one that surprised me that you said. That's why I'm harassing you about it. EY? Yeah, EY. So I think, so EY, that seems ridiculous to me. EY is, I think, one of the biggest employers, the biggest, I think Accenture is number one. EY, I think, is number two, professional services. All right, but honestly, can't you find enough, like what are they bringing in, software engineers or something? Because like consultants, can't you just turn anyone into a consultant? Like, come on, there's got to be enough. Go to business school and empty it out and there's all your consultants, right?

4:44So I find that weird. Yeah, look, I think maybe you're right. Like if the reason that Infosys and Tata are bringing people over from India is just because they think it's a better cultural fit, for example, or maybe they can pay them less. Well, I'm sure the reason is they're paying them less. It's much cheaper to bring in - More sympathetic to that. It's labor arbitrage, very clearly. So just on that, which is why Trump's saying, or the administration, I doubt Trump's that involved in the details and why the administration is saying, well, let's whack the 100 grand US fee on it. A, it will help balance the budget, which is tremendously unbalanced.

5:18Which it won't. Yeah, well, it doesn't hurt. But B, it'll stop those Indian body shops and bringing in relatively cheap labor, call it 100 grand a year labor, which is not what this is. This is meant to be for the likes of Amazon and NVIDIA. It's meant to be for the high tech, high skilled labor that you just don't have resource in the US for. All right, but can I tell you just another reason that this is dumb, which is the, well, it's actually the same reason. I said to you, no company is going to do this if they can take an easier option. And you said, you're wrong, like Tata and Infosys might.

5:50And like, maybe I can say that point to you. But fundamentally, putting the two of them to the side, it's still true. And the reason that, and as a consequence of it being true, or the truth is connected to the fact that, well, how many software engineers or skilled, like I'm saying software engineers, but how many skilled labor employees are floating around the US unable to get a job? Like there's massive wage inflation over an extended time. Yeah, the job market's softened a bit, but not for these people that are competing with these H1Bs. Yeah, it's almost like there's a dichotomy that for good people, good engineers, good software engineers, unbelievable inflation.

6:30But there's been a lot of redundancies and firings for people who just aren't that good. But you think there's unemployed people in the US and people are saying, oh, there's unemployed people I could hire, but instead I'm going to go get an H-1B? You think that's going on? Well, I think there's two points there. In 2024, 150 ,000 tech workers were laid off across more than 549 companies. And obviously, this continues into this year. So call it probably 250 ,000 have been laid off in the last 18 months. That's a lot of – what all the companies did is they hired too many people during COVID. They hired a bunch of not very good people amongst good people, and they just got rid of all the shit, essentially.

7:10So that's – you never fire good people. Yeah, but let's talk about what those tech workers are. All right. Recruiters, people working in tech, not necessarily technologists. Recruiters, marketers, and then people working eight jobs at the same time. So they've still got seven other jobs that they're doing. so don't worry about them. And so I just think there's not this huge pool of unemployed people that are being replaced with H-1B visas. And if there's a pool of unemployed people that nobody wants, then what this will do is force good companies to hire bad people instead of going and getting the H-1B or paying, no one's going to pay 100K for this H-1B.

7:49No, I disagree because it's not that they're saying you can't get H-1Bs. It's saying you've going to pay 100 grand over four years, 25 grand a year. What that means is you're not going to hire a 100 grand person because it's too expensive. But if you're paying someone for 400 grand a year and it's 25K extra, that's 5%. You're paying a 5 % kicker to get this great person from India or China or wherever you're getting them from. That actually makes sense. I actually don't mind the elegance of this policy because compared to the ridiculous lottery you had where Tata's bringing all these cheap 80 to 90 grand resources in on H1Bs, that's not what H1Bs are for.

8:23H1Bs are for a three, 400K person you just don't have in the US. I think it makes sense. I'm not going to argue that. I think your argument is, it's a good argument, the argument that you make. And so let's talk about what Australia can do, given that this has popped up. I don't think there's any change to my view. Maybe I would summarize it as, instead of sneaking in the ISIS brides into Australia, maybe we should have a free-for-all for really highly skilled, high-quality people in technology to move to this country and get jobs here and make it as easy as is humanly possible for them to do that.

8:59And those people will end up driving a much stronger technology sector in Australia. That's the bottom line. I think they should be like US, I think it should be a 50 grand or whatever. There should be some sort of cost involved, but absolutely it shouldn't be hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think 50 grand per employee over four years, call it 12 and a half a year, feels about right. That's sort of making sure you don't bring in the cheap people. You bring in really good people. So, we're not giving a job to an Australian because we're giving it to someone who's cheaper. We don't want that.

9:29We want better people, not cheaper people. Because it makes no sense for it to be a one-off. It has to be yearly. The one-off makes no sense, right? It's one-off over four years. It gives you a four-year visa and you're paying 25. I'm pretty sure that's what's happening. It's 25K a year. Is that what they've decided on? Because when I last looked at it, they hadn't decided, right because if it's just a one-off payment then the problem with that is that you're held to ransom by the employee so like if i'm an employee and it's 100k one-off like six months into my tenure i'm saying you need to double my salary or i'm gonna leave and your 100k is blown down the toilet right so basically i definitely think that australia should be encouraging highly skilled migration, like on working visas?

10:17No, we agree on that. We clearly agree on that. Yeah, absolutely. And this shouldn't be just in tech. This should be in medicine. It should be in building, in trades. It should be across the board, really. We really bring a lot of doctors and nurses in from overseas, but this should be across every industry, every skilled industry. We tend to bring in lots of hairdressers and sort of unskilled workers and students, obviously. We should be bringing in highly skilled workers. Yeah. Maybe we can train the ISIS brides how to do this after they do their 15 years of mandatory jail for - Possibly. On that note, my question number two.

10:52This one comes in via LinkedIn from Matthew and he asks, I've just started a new business. Should I get a mentor? You should get Adam. Adam's got lots of time on his hands and there's nothing he likes more than giving free time to people where he's got no economic involvement and exposure. Well, our dear is Australia's most prolific mentor. I'm Australia's most declined mentor. Should you get a mentor? What's a mentor? I mean, I'm not trying to be facetious in saying this, but like what's a mentor? Because sometimes I spend time with people and then they describe me as their mentor and I think, oh, is that what our relationship is?

11:32I thought we were just more friends talking about things. And so I don't really know what a mentor is. A mentor, in my view, is more someone where you're in a professional work context, like working for a company, and they're more senior than you, and they take a liking to you, and they kind of give you some guidance and teach you how to maneuver through the system and teach you stuff and maybe advocate for you inside the organization. And so I'm going to define what I think a mentor means in this context, and you can tell me if you agree, Adam. I think a mentor is someone that you spend time with semi-regularly who can give you advice on the challenges or decisions that you're facing.

12:17Is that what a mentor is? Yeah, I think a mentor is someone who, if you're talking about in romantic terms, you're sort of going steady. You've got this ongoing relationship. You may be exclusive. There's no other mentors you dalliance with. It's just one mentor. Oh, you think it's only one mentor? You think that's it? You've got only one slot per person. Can you have more than one? I think when you sort of freelance across multiple mentors, that feels a bit dirty. Well, there you go. I'm learning new things about this all the time. It's, I mean, I'm not sure, it's not the best podcast set up where they ask a question and like I'm literally learning about what the question means as I'm trying to answer it.

12:54So do I think you should get someone, maybe it's the exclusive person or maybe there's more than one. should you get someone who can help you make better decisions and give you some guidance and teach you some stuff yes of course you should but um i think mostly what you'll run into is a whole lot of the people that are most willing to give you their time are the people less able to impart wisdom and so that's the challenge with finding a mentor and i think going out and hunting a mentor, it feels quite artificial. Contrived, you could say. Contrived, yes, exactly. And so what would you do if you were like 25 or 30 and you wanted to find a mentor, what would you do?

13:42I've never been hugely into mentors. There's a few people whose advice I've put you in this category. I hope you're not going to say I'm your mentor. No, I wouldn't go that far. All right, thank God. Because one, you should not take my advice. and two is I would have said, well, that's another friend crossed off the list. I think a mentor, I don't really – a couple of people whose advice I very much value, a couple of current chairmen, previous chairmen, I put in that category, and that's very much a CEO-chairman relationship. It's very much like that. But I've never been one to really sort of go for mentors.

14:14I've always found it a bit unnecessary. And often when somebody asks me, I'll generally say – I've got about probably 30, 40 people who would ask me stuff randomly. and definitely not in a mentor-mentee relationship. This is much more ad hoc. They might ask me something once a year or twice a year or a little bit more regularly. I'm always happy to, and I say to people, I'm not going to mentor you, inverted commas, partly for the reasons I said before, but partly because I don't have time. But if you have a question, feel free to ask me and that can be over email, could be a quick call. So I'm much more sort of happy to give ad hoc advice in my area of expertise rather than just being some sort of like priest-like mentor relations.

14:53I found that just really, really unusual because I don't think there's enough wisdom I can impart to one person. It's much more, well, if you want to raise capital and do a shareholder agreement, maybe I can help on that because I've done that. Or if you're thinking of using Salesforce versus Braze, I can help you on that because we've been through that. But if it's something very specific I've done, I'm happy to give my experience. But just being this sort of ongoing mentor, I just find that just a bit of a sort of furphy. I sit down and give a surprising number of people life advice but not unsolicited like they come and they say can we have a coffee I've got this I'm at this crossroad in my life can you give me some advice and so I can't I can't get through I don't know even 20 % of the people that contact me but I try to do it on a pretty regular basis but that's a one-off like I'm not like I don't have time to continue to engage with them on that right like I try to help them as much as I can and maybe they'll send me a WhatsApp and I'll answer it kind of thing.

15:53But I think the people that I spend most time with, maybe I'll say it in a slightly different way. Let's do the Yoda Luke Skywalker analogy. Why does Yoda help Luke Skywalker? The answer is, like he mentored Luke Skywalker, right? I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but I get the – I've watched it, right? I think he more than mentored him. He taught him. He's a teacher. All right, well, I call that part of mentoring. No, I think mentoring is less, more ad hoc than teaching. All right. The analogy may not be perfect, but just roll with it. Frankly, a terrible analogy. It's not terrible. It's all right.

16:27What about Daniel's son, Mr. Miyagi? That's the same. I wouldn't call that a mentor. He's a teacher. He's a sensor. All right. Yes. Daniel's son, he's not a mentor. I don't know. Mike, are you going to give me Yoda or not Yoda? I've got Yoda or not? I'll give you Yoda. I think Obi-Wan might be a better analogy. Okay. Well, it's equal no matter who you refer to because I'll say Obi-Wan, okay? And like anyone listening to this podcast that's into Star Wars is into Star Wars more than I am, so no hate mail. If you're going to send me hate mail, send it about something high quality, not about Star Wars because I don't claim to be any expert.

17:02I've never seen someone so obsessed with hate mail as you. I know. Well, you know, I've got stacks of it. So anyway, so Obi-Wan and Skywalker. Why does Obi-Wan mentor Skywalker? The simple answer is because there's something in it for him. That is why he's mentoring him. What's it? Obi-Wan couldn't be – Obi-Wan had to be coaxed into doing that. Maybe he hated it. Yeah, but he wants like the universe to have the Jedi back on top and to defeat the evil – Did he? I thought Obi-Wan was more than happy not to mentor anyone. He was happy with his living in his sand dune thing. All right. Anyway, whatever it is, we're going to use that as the analogy.

17:40so I'm really pleased that I brought this up so basically um there's something in it for him and so I think that the the reality of it is the people the younger people with less experience with whom I spend most time and most mentor if you want to call it that are people where I'm involved in their business generally speaking and have economic exposure not always but generally And so in the course of building the business together with them, what I'm actually doing with my relationship is guiding them on how to think through making decisions about things and telling them what I know, because they're running the business, not me.

18:21And that's the nature of my role with them. And so that is very self-interested. Now, the truth is, I probably care more about them. I do. Honestly, I care more about them than I do about the business. That's where it ends up in the relationship. but I think to come back to the question, it is very difficult to find a high quality mentor with wisdom and get them to help you on an ongoing basis if there's no natural reason for that ongoing relationship. Otherwise, as you said, I think it's contrived. Yeah. I think whenever somebody asks me for stuff, I only really like to opine on stuff I've done.

18:59I don't think my wisdom is anything greater than anyone, but if you've done something before - Well, that's a load of rubbish. No, I think it's like ultimately what I'm good at is stuff where I've made a mistake myself and I can tell someone, hey, Mike, don't make this mistake because I've literally done this. No, you're not just good at that. You are good at learning from your own mistakes, but I think you've got a very strong ability to learn from other mistakes that you've seen made and just to be able to think through things in a smart way. So anyway, don't sell yourself short, but you can keep talking.

19:32Keep self-deprecating. I'm sure the rest of what you're saying about yourself negatively is going to be right, but that bit is not right. No, I'm pretty much done. I think in general, this is a word to most mentors. I think just stay in your lane. Don't mentor on stuff that you can't give great guidance on, and usually that's stuff that you've probably learned from yourself. People say I have an opinion about everything, but it's because they don't ask me about fashion or movies or music. I mean, like I don't have many opinions about any of those things. So yeah, I think I kind of agree with you on that.

20:03Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. Great question. We'll go to a super quick break back in a few moments.

20:12And we're back. Mike, question number three. All right. Final question from today comes in from Zoe. Both of you travel a lot for business and as someone who can't fly business class all the time. I would love to get your thoughts on how to best manage jet lag when coming off a long haul flight. And I think she's getting at... I'm not sure if Zoe listens that closer, but I do tend to fly more first and private than business. I just, just sorry, just like not all of us. Let Mike finish what he was going to say. That's all I was going to say. I didn't know anything else. You're going to say, you think Zoe, you think Zoe can't always have a bed when she travels is what I think you were going to say.

20:48Yeah. I was going to say, I think she's getting at the fact that because i think you still do experience jet lag whatever class you fly yeah but is it is it easier maybe in a in a at the pointy end of the plane um well jet lag's caused by your sleeping rhythms being impacted it's probably it's probably for most people easier to sleep if you can if you can lie flat who's it not easy to sleep if you can't lay flat a bat or something what are you talking everyone can sleep it alone flat yeah okay there you go. I mean, we can be blunt at the beginning and say complaining about jet lag when you're traveling with a bed is, sounds pretty awkward when traveling in the seat is like so much harder, but we, but we, you can still get jet lag and we still have to figure out ways to deal with it.

21:39What, like, do you get, like, how's your jet lag in general? Like, do you suffer from a lot of chitlo yes and no i'm i do my best to control it and i've got a few tactics i'll talk about in a second but it depends where you're going i think if you're going from melbourne and we obviously go to the uk a lot it depends on the time of year but if you're going melbourne uk especially if you've got kids so your sleeping's a bit impacted by their sleeping you can't go to sleep before they go to sleep etc if you're going melbourne to london i'm i go to bed pretty early for the first few days i get there so i'm generally in bed sort of 8 39 and up at sort of 334 which actually works well for our pod because i can i can do the pod at a pretty good time but it takes about sort of four to five days I find going east to west.

22:17Funnily enough, west to east, whilst in many ways worse, I actually get less jet lag doing that. Because east to west, obviously you're gaining time. Like if you're flying to the UK, you're probably not landing before you took off time-wise, but you're pretty close. When I go to the US, I'm often landing before I took off in terms of like what time it is. US is different. Now, UK, let's say UK, I'd usually leave court 10 o 'clock at night and you arrive 5 a.m. the next day. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, you're gaining time. I find that much easier. One of the things, I'm going to tell you some things I do.

22:52You tell me if you do them. Okay. So, number one, immediately my watch or my phone, I don't want to watch, my phone is set to the destination time as soon as I get on that plane. Yes or no? Yes, but I'm keeping an eye on both times. I'm usually doing work and sort of keeping it. So I keep my computer on Australia time and my phone watch on future time. Oh, yeah, I do the same thing. Okay, we're way too similar. Okay, good. Okay, and then because I know what time it is in the destination, I will immediately try to adjust my sleep schedule to sleep at the destination. It's not always possible, but it's often possible.

23:34You do your best. So let's say we're going to the UK, most common destination for us, and you're going back. So I'll try and this is the time where we let kids stay up as long as they want. So ideally you go to the UK, you want to try and stay up to like 2 a.m. because you're getting close to the UK time. And the US is obviously a bit different. So when I came from Portugal a couple of weeks ago, I had like a flight and this is where I'm not sure if you do this, this is where I caught cheat but it's really powerful for me. I had like a two o 'clock in the afternoon flight so quite early and I took a sleeping tablet like three or four o 'clock because it was really caught 1 a.m 2 a.m melbourne time I took a powerful sleeping tablet and I was able to sleep on that flight six hours now I landed in melbourne and I call it 8 p.m 9 p.m but I hadn't so I had a little bit of sleep call it six hours so but not so much sleep I couldn't sleep when I got back to melbourne so I had a big sort of eye to So I want to have a bit of sleep, but not too much.

24:31Yeah, I think that's right. So I have a alarm and all that stuff. So without sleeping tablets, I'd be stuffed. But this is the only time I ever use sleeping tablets is dealing with jet lag. So I never use sleeping tablets. Really? Never. Yep, I never use sleeping tablets. But I do use melatonin, which is not a sleeping tablet. But it's similar impact. It has totally different impact. I know they sell it as a sleeping tablet. I know they call melatonin a sleep aid. There is no clinical evidence that says it's a sleep aid. When you take, I know what you take. You take some benzodiazepine, like probably, what do you take?